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Comment by acangiano | Hacker News Reader

This shows the advantage of living in a relatively inexpensive country.

I make between $3-6K/mo extra through technical blogging in my spare time, and I couldn't afford to quit my day job as a result of that revenue alone (not that I want to). Conversely, if I was living in Poland, I'd be king of Warsaw. :-P

That's the beauty of income from the Internet. It can be virtually independent of where you live, so if you reside somewhere inexpensive you can acquire a ridiculously good lifestyle for much less money and effort of your North American peers.

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Ther are MANY great and beautiful places to live in the U.S. where $3-6k per month is a substantial living. Check Spokane WA or most of Idaho.

Central Japan, too, FWIW. It isn't a life of absurd luxury but sure looks like that to any salaryman.

Same here in France. For the record, we reduced our expenses to one third of what we did before, by moving from Paris to a small village.

What village do you live in and how much do you spend each month more or less if I may ask? How much is needed to live comfortably? I'm thinking of going back to Europe but I'm afraid I may have got completely spoiled at how cheap life is over here in Arequipa, Peru.

I'll reply by email!

There are plenty of nice places in Texas where 3-6k/mo is good living. Many are even in the cities, away from (most of) the rednecks that create the stereotype.

6k a month in Dallas and Austin is very decent.

It's a nice mid level developer salary down here in NZ too.

A couple of questions

1. Do you make $3-6K from writing to other blogs or from your blogs? Compete tell me that you aren't far from my little Qr Code generator (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/math-blog.com+programmingze...) that doesn't generate even $50/month.

2. Does your wife work? Because I think $6K, coupled with some freelancing in the side can make the cut in Toronto, no?

> Do you make $3-6K from writing to other blogs or from your blogs?

My own blogs.

> Compete tell me that you aren't far from my little Qr Code generator (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/math-blog.com+programmingze...) that doesn't generate even $50/month.

Compete statistics for my sites appears to be completely off. And I don't mean off by a factor of x. Randomly off, even when comparing my own sites to each others. That said, having a good amount of traffic definitely helps, but it's only one part of the equation. Monetizing that traffic is an art in itself.

> think $6K, coupled with some freelancing in the side can make the cut in Toronto, no?

OK, technically I guess I could live off that extra income even in Toronto, but the high cost of living would definitely grant me a lifestyle that pales in comparison to cheaper places, particularly overseas. Of course, one could argue that dedicating myself full time to this I could probably double or more my revenue. But it's not something I'm pursuing at this moment, as I love my job.

> That said, having a good amount of traffic definitely helps, but it's only one part of the equation. Monetizing that traffic is an art in itself.

Even if it's off by some margin, I don't think you have enough traffic to score $6K from ads like Adsense. I'm definitively interested to know how you do it. I already took the survey, but I think you should register people who are looking to know more about the book and not only affiliate marketers.

> But it's not something I'm pursuing at this moment, as I love my job.

That's totally another thing!

> Even if it's off by some margin, I don't think you have enough traffic to score $6K from ads like Adsense.

Indeed. Not by a long shot.

> I already took the survey, but I think you should register people who are looking to know more about the book and not only affiliate marketers.

I agree with you. When I designed the survey I was mostly checking out if there was any interest in the book. Now that I know I'll go through with the plan of writing the book, I'll create a dedicated landing page and mailing list for people interested in it, even before the book is ready.

I just checked out your blogs. Would you mind sharing which blog drives the most revenue, and what the mix is from Amazon, Google, & other sources? I've blogged on & off for the last few years, and the prospect of making some money off it might motivate me to do it more regularly.

The revenue is variable from month to month, but Programming Zen and Math Blog fight each other for the crown of most revenue each month (excluding Any New Books which is technically a blog, but more of a service in reality). Regarding income, it's a mix of Amazon, other affiliate programs, ads, and sponsorships. As I mentioned above, I'm writing a blueprint for making extra money and getting other important benefits out of technical blogging. If this interests you, please take my quick survey. It will help me include all the info people are really after: https://spreadsheets0.google.com/viewform?hl=en&hl=en...

And possibly what theme / blog engine you are using to generate the blogs. They all seem similar with mostly color scheme changes.

I will definitely cover all that in detail in the ebook I'm preparing. That said, I mostly use Wordpress and premium subscription based themes (e.g., Elegant Themes).

$3-6k, you say? I've got a blog (well, an article site) that pulls in perhaps $5/month, so I'd love to know where and how you're getting traffic of that magnitude. Even $1k a month would be very welcome here ;)

I'm writing an ebook that will guide people to do specifically that. It would help if you could take this survey to let me know what you'd like to see within it: https://spreadsheets0.google.com/viewform?hl=en&hl=en...

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